A plan to raise income taxes on some of California’s wealthiest residents — individuals and couples making more than $2 million a year — and use the money to pay for increased electric vehicle rebates, more electric charging stations, expanded wildfire fighting resources and other clean air programs has qualified for the November statewide ballot.
The “Clean Cars and Clean Air Act,” if approved by a majority of voters this fall, would generate $3 billion to $4.5 billion annually, according to the state Legislative Analyst’s Office."
Will California gun control legislation survive the Supreme Court ruling? Time will tell
LA Times, GEORGE SKELTON: “Gun control bills have been shooting through the state Legislature at rapid-fire speed, and Gov. Gavin Newsom is eager to sign them. But it’s anyone’s guess how many will survive this Supreme Court.
It’s also not clear which existing California gun controls will remain intact, including biggies such as the ban on sales of military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines holding more than 10 rounds.
Many seem in jeopardy because of the conservative court’s ruling that the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms overrides a New York law restricting who may legally carry a concealed gun in public. California and a handful of other states have similar laws.”
Sacramento councilman’s employee and her family live in the house where he says he lives
THERESA CLIFT: "A woman who works for Sacramento City Councilman Sean Loloee lives with her family in the Hagginwood home he owns, and one man has been registered to vote there for the past year and a half.
Loloee, who is facing the prospect of a City Council investigation into his residency following a series of stories in The Sacramento Bee report, also says he lives in the home. Sacramento requires that council members live in the districts they represent.
The Hagginwood home, which is in Loloee’s district, is the residence where Loloee is registered to vote. His family has owned another house in Granite Bay since 2016."
‘A justice of great intellect’: S.F.-born Justice Breyer steps down from Supreme Court
The Chronicle, BOB EGELKO: “Stephen Breyer is a San Francisco native who, like his younger brother Charles, became an Eagle Scout, attended elite Lowell High School, then followed his father’s path into the legal profession.
But in his case, the path led to a nearly 28-year term on the U.S. Supreme Court, and a record as a relatively moderate liberal who sought, with only occasional success, a middle path on an increasingly divided court.
Breyer, 83, is retiring Thursday at the end of the court’s 2021-22 term. His final opinions include dissents from the conservative majority’s rulings overturning the constitutional right to abortion that the court had established in 1973 and declaring a constitutional right to carry concealed firearms in public, striking down laws in California and five other states.”
Extreme heat, drought will permanently scar California and its social fabric
LA Times, HAYLEY SMITH: “Unprecedented dryness across the western United States is meeting with increasingly warm temperatures to create climate conditions so extreme that the landscape of California could permanently and profoundly change, a growing number of scientists say.
The Golden State’s great drying has already begun to reduce snowpack, worsen wildfires and dry out soils, and researchers say that trend will likely continue, along with the widespread loss of trees and other significant shifts.
Some say what’s in store for the state could be akin to the conditions that drove people thousands of years ago to abandon thriving cities in the Southwest and other arid parts of the world as severe drought contributed to crop failures and the crumbling of social norms.”
Supreme Court rules for coal-producing states, limits EPA’s power to fight climate change
LA Times, DAVID G SAVAGE: “The Supreme Court ruled Thursday for the major coal-producing states and sharply limited the Biden administration’s authority to restrict the carbon pollution that is causing global warming.
The justices agreed with lawyers for West Virginia, and said Congress did not give environmental regulators broad authority to reshape the system for producing electric power by switching from coal to natural gas, wind turbines and solar energy.
The court split 6-3 in the case of West Virginia vs. EPA.”
Labeling it ‘rushed’ and ‘lousy,’ California lawmakers OK Newsom’s power plan
CALMatters, JULIE CART: “The expansive energy bill that so angered clean-energy advocates and local officials — for its capitulation to short-term reliance on fossil-fuel and its closed-door negotiations — won lukewarm passage in California’s Legislature late Wednesday.
Republican members railed about being shut out of brokering the details of the plan that would manage California’s fragile electricity grid during summer power drains. Democrats saw the bill’s reliance on dirty energy sources to prop up power generation as a backward step.
During prolonged and pointed debate, the legislation was characterized as “lousy” and “crappy” — and those were the legislators who supported it.”
California-backed cure for ‘bubble baby’ disease stalls — again
Capitol Weekly, DAVID JENSEN: “The “bubble babies” saga and a California-financed cure for their life-threatening affliction have hit another snag, more than two years after a British company abandoned the effort.
It is a story that involves more than $40 million from California’s stem cell agency, federal regulators, the University of California, the agonizingly slow pace of science and 20 children who have been denied care — not to mention a company called Orchard Therapeutics PLC.
Last February, it appeared that the trial could be revived and at least some of the children could begin treatments this month. But the latest word is that treatments are not likely to begin until November or December.”
California’s eviction moratorium to lift at midnight, despite rent relief concerns
LA Times, HANNAH WILEY: “A limited three-month extension to California’s eviction moratorium is scheduled to expire on Thursday at midnight, despite opposition from tenant advocates who say the state still hasn’t done enough to keep renters housed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Lawmakers in March moved the eviction moratorium’s expiration date from April 1 to July 1 for California tenants who’d applied for the state’s rent relief program by the end of March.
That extension also afforded the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development more time to work through a backlog of applications and disburse payments to thousands of renters who still hadn’t received aid. Of the 404,313 household applications received, the department has so far processed 329,327, according to the state’s rent relief dashboard. The average assistance per recipient totals $11,667, and the state has paid out more than $3.8 billion in assistance.”
Ballot measure nail-biter: Should California keep forcing prisoners to work?
CALMatters, BYRHONDA LYONS: “Samual Brown was on the front lines of the pandemic, sanitizing and disinfecting prison cells. Diagnosed with asthma, Brown, 45, said he feared contracting the virus. He wanted to quit his prison job.
He couldn’t.
“My supervisor told me … I had to do this job,” Brown said.”
Analysis: California has the highest share of residents who identify as LGBT
The Chronicle, RYAN KOST: “About 2.7 million or 9.1% of Californians identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender — the largest share of any highly populated state and one that is “considerably higher” than the national figure of 7.9%, according to a census data analysis published by the Public Policy Institute of California.
Even the national figure is higher than estimates derived from other surveys. In February Gallup reported 7.1% of U.S. adults identify as LGBT — about double the percentage from 2012 when the firm first measured it. One possible reason for the difference, senior fellow Hans Johnson wrote in a post outlining his findings, was survey type. Gallup and others rely on phone calls, whereas the census used an online format, which may help survey takers feel more at ease when answering potentially sensitive questions.
For his analysis, Johnson drew from the Census Bureau’s ongoing Household Pulse Survey, designed to measure household experiences with the pandemic. “In July 2021, for the first time ever, the Census Bureau initiated a series of nationwide surveys that included questions about sexual orientation and gender identity,” Johnson wrote. In order to strengthen the quality of the analysis, Johnson averaged the data from the six most recent surveys taken December 2021 through May 2022.”
Is California ready for ‘human composting’ as an alternative to casket burial, cremation?
LA Times, ANABEL SOSA: “During a rafting trip in the West, Angela Bean took a palm-full of her son’s ashes and spread them across rushing water. Her 27-year-old son, who died in a fatal fall from a pickup truck in 2015, had told her he wanted to donate his organs and be cremated.
Years later, Bean found out about human composting, an alternative burial method to cremation and conventional casket burials that had been legalized in Washington and other states.
“If California had that option back then, I know he would’ve liked to have been composted,” the Oakland resident said about her son, who studied natural resources at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.”
California will require health facilities to start sharing patient data with each other
CALMatters, KRISTEN HWANG: “In March 2020, as Californians hunkered down for what many expected to be a two-week lockdown, high-ranking health officials were scrambling to find out how many COVID-19 patients were hospitalized, how many were in intensive care and how many beds remained available.
With no system in place for hospitals to report this information to the state and share it, Secretary of Health and Human Services Dr. Mark Ghaly, the state’s public health director and other staff had to call 426 hospitals to assess the situation.
Now, officials hope to avoid similar scenarios in the future by changing the way patient data is collected and shared. Legislation passed last year requires all health and human services providers to sign a statewide data-sharing agreement. This includes hospitals, doctor’s offices, nursing homes, public health agencies, laboratories, mental and behavioral health providers, substance use treatment facilities, insurance plans, public health departments and emergency services.”
COVID in California: Virus is mutating in ways that could make it resistant to treatments
The Chronicle, AIDIN VAZIRI/RITA BEAMISH: “California’s COVID-19 cases remain stubbornly high, with the Bay Area’s rate of infections continuing to outpace other regions across the state. Now we face the prospect that the emerging BA.4 and BA.5 omicron subvariants could extend or even worsen the current surge into the summer.
Targeted vaccination campaigns narrowed disparities in COVID death rates in California, especially for the Latino community. But will officials pick the right candidate for vaccinations next fall, when they expect a renewed surge of the coronavirus?
Two new highly infectious and immune-evasive coronavirus variants are now dominant in the United States, according to estimates released this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and together they likely will drive the Bay Area’s long spring surge well into summer, health experts say. It’s become apparent that the pandemic pattern people have become accustomed to over the past two and a half years — a rise in cases over several weeks,
Will new COVID variants BA.4 and BA.5 cause the Bay Area’s surge to get even worse?
The Chronicle, ERIN ALLDAY: “Two new highly infectious and immune-evasive coronavirus variants are now dominant in the United States, according to estimates released this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and together they likely will drive the Bay Area’s long spring surge well into summer, health experts say.
It’s not yet clear exactly what impact BA.4 and BA.5 — both subvariants of omicron — will have in the Bay Area, where cases may be climbing again after several weeks of sluggish decline. It’s become apparent, though, that the pandemic pattern that people have become accustomed to over the past 2½ years — a rise in cases over several weeks, followed by a relatively short plateau and then a rapid drop — isn’t playing out this time.
Instead, the Bay Area has been snared in a sixth wave of infection since early April, with cases likely at or near their highest levels of the pandemic, though COVID hospitalizations and deaths have remained comparatively low. The new variants could prolong the current surge or cause a fresh spike in cases, and they could put pressure on health care systems frayed from nearly three years of pandemic stress.”
What it’s like to catch the coronavirus for the sake of science
LA Times, MELISSA HEALY: “On a cold, damp Monday just over a year into the pandemic, Jacob Hopkins tilted his head back in a London hospital and did something no other human had ever done before: He allowed five doctors in full hazmat garb to dribble into his nostrils a precisely calibrated suspension of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
Hopkins would go on to become one of the more than 546 million people across the globe to be infected with the virus known to scientists as SARS-CoV-2.
He did it for science.”
Maybe it’s time for a RINO party: Republicans in Name Only (OP-ED)
Capitol Weekly, JOEL FOX: “Maybe there should be a RINO Party. You know—Republicans in Name Only. A number of Republican individuals are taunted by hard core fellow Republicans for not living up to the perceived standards that make one a Republican nowadays. Nuanced or mixed beliefs are not allowed. If you have a different position on a controversial issue or are willing to talk compromise, you are labeled a RINO — you don’t belong in the party.
One cannot, for instance, support a program of a strong international defense presence, some gun regulation or pro-choice on abortion for a limited amount of time during pregnancy. Those positions will get you labeled a RINO. Even if you believe in lower taxes, limited government and other conservative positions. According to a U.S. Senate candidate from Missouri, the RINO label qualifies you to be hunted by “true” Republicans, ones who have checked all the boxes appropriately, according to whoever it is in charge of box-checking in today’s Republican Party.
This phenomenon is not new to our polarized political times, although the subject may have become more intense lately. When I worked with former Los Angeles mayor, Republican Richard Riordan, in his unsuccessful run for California governor in 2002, it was not uncommon to hear him called a RINO at a few GOP events.”
V.P. Harris visits Bay Area for ‘political engagements’ in San Francisco, Los Gatos
The Chronicle, LAUREN HERNANDEZ: “Vice President Kamala Harris arrived in San Francisco on Wednesday afternoon for what her staff described as “political engagements” scheduled for Thursday in Los Gatos and San Francisco.
Details about the events were not provided by Harris’ aides, but local news organizations reported that she was scheduled to attend a high-dollar fundraising event in Los Gatos.
Harris was greeted at San Francisco International Airport by San Francisco Mayor London Breed and Mayor Libby Schaaf from Harris’ hometown of Oakland.”
LA Times, MARK Z BARABAK: “There’s not much that disturbs the peace in the comfortable confines of Contra Costa County, so when a thieving flash mob set upon the Nordstrom at an upscale mall, smashing and grabbing, it was big news for days on end.
The attack in November coincided with a series of brazen robberies across the bay at posh retailers in San Francisco’s Union Square, which also drew national headlines.
The rampage contributed to a gnawing sense of lawlessness in the city and helped lead to the June 8 recall of its left-leaning district attorney. Yet on the same day Chesa Boudin was ousted, voters in the more moderate Contra Costa suburbs decisively reelected his progressive peer, Dist. Atty. Diana Becton, despite attempts to wrap the plundered Nordstrom around her neck.”
Google records when you search for abortion pills and info. Will it tell the cops?
The Chronicle, CAROLYN SAID: “A woman looks online for information about abortion pills. Soon, there’s a knock on the door. Local authorities had subpoenaed Google for all such searches performed in their jurisdiction.
Another woman visits a friend who is suspected of performing illegal abortions. Police find the woman through a “geofence” warrant that harvests data on smartphone users who were in the friend’s vicinity.
Such scenarios might read like dystopian fiction, but they could soon become commonplace, according to abortion activists and privacy advocates.”
‘How could I lose everything?’ Families shattered a year after LAPD fireworks explosion
LA Times, BRITTNY MEJIA/KEVIN RECTOR/GENARO MOLINA: “Before Los Angeles police sent a blast wave through it, Paula Benítez de Rodríguez’s life revolved around the squat, bubble-gum pink building she owns in South Los Angeles.
Benítez de Rodríguez, 73, had saved for years to purchase the building, and it anchored her American dream. The apartment where she lived with her daughter Maria del Carmen Rodríguez and a grandson was there, as was her zapatería, the shoe store where she worked seven days a week.
The building also had a second apartment for another daughter, 53-year-old Leticia Rodríguez, her son-in-law, her 27-year-old grandson, her grandson’s girlfriend and her great-granddaughter. There was an additional space where another daughter, Lilia, ran a hair salon that helped pay the mortgage.”
Biden backs changing Senate filibuster rules as a way to codify abortion rights
AP, DARLENE SUPERVILLE/ZEKE MILLER: “President Biden said Thursday that the Supreme Court’s decision ending a constitutional right to abortion is “destabilizing” and that he supports changing Senate rules to codify nationwide abortion protections. He maintained the ruling does not affect U.S. standing on the world stage as he took credit for modernizing the NATO alliance to adapt to new threats from Russia and China.
Biden was speaking to reporters at the conclusion of a five-day foreign trip to huddle with North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies in Madrid and the leaders of the Group of 7 advanced democratic economies in the Bavarian Alps, which came as the nation was still grappling with the fallout from Friday’s Supreme Court decision.
“America is better positioned to lead the world than we ever have been,” Biden said. “But one thing that has been destabilizing is the outrageous behavior of the Supreme Court of United States in overruling not only Roe v. Wade, but essentially challenging the right to privacy.””
